That craving for an audience

I remember when I had just started blogging (back in IIT – 2005/06), Dhakkan (and I am sure others in my hostel-wing) would tell me how obsessed I was with waiting for a new comment and then replying to it and then waiting for the next one and on and on. Nothing much has changed. The blogging world is certainly not the same (after Facebook and Twitter took over internet), as every blogger would acknoweldge. So of course I no more expect comments on my blog. I don’t blog much anyway – relative to how I was in IIT and for the first few years of my corporate job. But the wait for an audience to listen to what I have to say, look at what I have to show and read up and acknowledge what I have to write, remains, be it on Facebook or Instagram or my 3 Minute Stories. As strong as ever. It is so me. This craving for an audience was the reason I left my business consulting job four years ago, that otherwise offered me such a structured career path!

I always called my blog shit.

‘Phres blogshit’ has been the tagline for Vatsap? ever since I bought this domain name (and has never ever changed). That was so because I believed my writing sucked (I am not so harsh on myself anymore – but love the tagline nevertheless ? ). So although I was neither very proud of my writing skills nor my knowledge of the world, I still wrote – posts after posts, because the world of internet had opened up the access for strangers to read what other strangers wrote. I hoped that someone somewhere out there might end up liking my shit. Which did happen eventually. In fact, I am still in touch with some people, after all these years, who I happened to know about, only because they bothered to read my blog-posts. And leave comments. To think of it, my writing (however shitty I thought / think it was) had a major role to play in turning MRP to my now Biwi.

Moving on to the present times, every time I make a 3 Minute Story, I desire for the world to watch it. The world obviously doesn’t. Sometimes even before I venture out to shoot, I already know that a particular story has a limited audience. I go ahead and shoot and make one anyway. Because I love the job. But until the entire world has not watched it, am I happy? Certainly not. May be one day my audience will find me. Till then, I need to keep getting better at my craft. I need to tell stories so good, and in such a way that everyone feels like making their friends and family watch them.

Just recently, I was in a company of various artists (of all kinds, from painters to illustrators to installations artists to clothes designers) for over a month. Some of them told me how they didn’t care if any one got their art or not. They did it for themselves. I can never think like that. I always care. That craving for an audience – I live for that.

Anyway, let me also include some photographs that I made this Friday when many in Goa (where I live) celebrated Sao Joao. If you could care to read my ramblings, I am sure you will like the images! After all, there are things that I know I am not so shitty at! ?

Siolim, Goa, India. 24 June 2016.

Man. Always in conflict with animal.

For some reason, I love this last image – so many different kinds of couples (and quadruples) have come together so nicely for a fraction of a second in one frame. This is all that photography means to me. It wasn’t easy shooting on this day. It kept raining a lot and the crowd was chaotic. But I am happy with whatever little I could return home with. I also recorded a live song being sung by someone on stage, and using that, plus some of these photographs and a lot more additional audio effects, created a multimedia artwork that you can check out on Facebook if you want to (it’s on insta too).

So yeah, that’s it for now. A lot more work to be created. A lot more work to be shared!